Maybe I'm Just Crazy
by ForteDragon
Summary: Every time we pass, I want to slow down-to reach out-and every time our eyes meet, the pain is unbearable, but I'll keep my distance. For your sake and my sanity. AU Yuukina. Cover not owned by me.
1. Chapter 1: Before

Chapter 1: Before

A/N: Not sure yet if I want to continue this or just make a collection of one-shots…Also note that the grammar for this won't make sense. I wanted it to sound the way one's own thoughts would to themselves, if that makes sense.

* * *

Meeting you was a miraculous mistake.

Miraculous; almost impossible; unforeseeable. You had wide, curious eyes. Blue, like the sky. All I could do was smile.

In my hands the barest flutter pulsed. Small white doves with equally small twigs held in their beaks. So ready and poised to release, like they'd been waiting for centuries, and never knew until now.

When our hands brushed, I crossed my toes. And hoped-That you wouldn't feel the stirring beat of tiny wings against your palm. Shhh, be calm, quiet, still.

The bright faces of the flowers. Even now, I can feel them jeering at my awkward muteness. Sometimes I still glare at their small petals. Part of me refuses to believe their innocence. You followed my gaze and giggled-but even that is a pale description. For what can match the beauty of thousands of stars, hundreds of worlds? Tantalizingly sweet, like fresh cream at the creamery down the street.

Do you-like flowers? you asked. How wrong you were. But I couldn't say no. Could only shrug and say, "I guess". You make me like the flowers.

Even then, your faint warmth lingered. A nest for waking doves. My hands still remember that feeling. Soft; Open; Achingly homely.

So how, then, could a miracle feel like such-such a mistake?

In part, you can't be blamed-It's not directly because of you. And yet-Why is it that I can barely, hardly, breathe? Whose suffocating hands are wrapped around my throat? Where is the origin of rising heat? These white feathers, now taking on your color. Flutter. Beat. Wing.

A frenzy of movement that I can't-Can't contain. Like the sound of a xylophone. Rising and falling. The forceful tug. But where is it? No matter how I search, I can't find it. The constricting red thread that must lay here: somewhere around my heart.

When you threw back your head to the sun, I was so, so entranced. Were you some sort of otherworldly magician? I can't look away, and this aching, aching, hurt, nestled deep below my skin just grows. In my palms, beneath my ribcage.

I want you either across an ocean, or close. Very very close. To me. Because where you are now-that distance is neither, and it is excruciating. I want to set these frenzied birds free, but I need to stifle them. I want you to see-me, but I also want to hide. I want a lot of things. But right now, I just want you to hold my hand, and ease the pressure of these thousands of birds-like rows of words on an open page. And yet, I don't even know your name.

I wish I did.


	2. Chapter 2: Falling and Fallen

A/N: Okay, I'm going to try to write this as a (probably short) multi-chapter story. I don't really have a long term plan for this, but I really enjoy writing it, so I suppose we'll just see where this goes.

* * *

I can hardly remember-the words I said, and how I was able to pull myself away. Or was it you who said goodbye? My memories are traitorous and wispy-only the birds have not forgotten.

What little I do know: the feeling of your name on my lips for the first time-strange but familiar- and the quiet chime of tiny, tinkling bells.

Back then, the birds were awake; alive; active. They hopped and they sprung; they pecked at the seeds-seeds that littered the floor of a too small cage, built from the living but not living- bones and flesh and sinew. Feathers shift beneath my skin, and hollow bones keep me light. I've found that the birds remind me of home.

I think I have gone mad. Mad with this new, different feeling, that I don't altogether hate. I'm afraid of this: The way I whisper your name in the dark (helplessly, intimately, desperately), because otherwise it feels as if I will disappear. The excruciating yet unforgettable ringing in my head, pounding a fluttering pulse through my veins. The reason that I can't help but feel you within each beat and blink of a wing or an eye.

You send a fire throughout my being, and when I think of you I feel full-fuller and wholer than I do alone. Like waking up to a light yellow morning.

And I don't want to forget. Not you. If I did, would it hurt? Would it hurt more than it does now? Would I die? Why is it that I can no longer imagine existing-here-without you? Perhaps these questions are absurd, but I still want an answer-I want to know. I want to find out why you do these things to me. One more time, these puzzled birds will sing out their hopeful tune, a certain five letters to form what I long for beyond belief.

All I want to do is sing, and sing, and breathe again. Somehow this endless cycle of inhaling and exhaling feels unimportant-like a chore. Under the starry sky, still tinged with pink, I want to set these birds free. No, to be truthful, I'm afraid, afraid of losing you in a whirlwind of white if I do. Although maybe you were never mine in the first place.

I miss you already.


	3. Chapter 3: What's Left of Us

It's been awhile since I last spoke to you. I don't think I know how to talk to you anymore. Then again, did I ever? Lately, I spend my time holding on to my mind; Trying to wash away the taste of a feeling that I finally know.

The taste of my love: sweet at first, but growing bitter and acrid now, stinging my lips and burning down my throat, deep into my gut. I stare at my reflection - long, dark hair framing my face, brown eyes so bright that they're almost maroon - and whisper the same words I had mumbled that day, the day that I'll not forget, even if I wished I could.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. So, so, sorry.

Sometimes, I still feel myself clawing at my skin or wiping at my mouth-though in vain. I've begun to realize that maybe I'm trying so hard to distance myself from you because I - I am not the one whom you seek. And that fact, above everything else, hurts. More so than a knife between the shoulderblades or a cold rebuttal. I might even say that maybe - maybe it hurts now more than when our eyes first met. This is different.

This is an ache, like a tumor within a wing, grounding and piercing me with cruel reality. My birds now, my red-stained birds; They are me, and I, them. Struck as if by an arrow with what we had feared all along. But no, I feel in some way, that perhaps this is my own fault. Who was it all along that cursed these hands, these doves, these feelings? Who ran from open arms in hopes that this chilling solitude would save me? Though, in the wrong way - I guess it has.

This is an ache, deep inside, somewhere I cannot reach, and refuse to venture. This is an ache, heightened by the numbness elsewhere.

Mere words cannot express my apologies. I'm sorry - for hurting you, and for hurting myself. I cannot bring myself to hate you, regardless of how you appear to be the source. I know you are not the cause - not the one at fault.

Truly, I yearn for what I can't have, but I hope that I'll see you again. For now, I sit, picking up the bloody, broken shards of what's left of me - what's left of us.

* * *

A/N: Okay, this was definitely a sudden turn from its previously fluffy first love story. Ouch. It's still really short, though (sorry not sorry).


End file.
